Authorization in Asp.net(Part II)

Authorization (Part II)

Claims Based Authorization

On creating an identity it might be assigned one or more claims that are issued by a trusted party. A claim is a name-value pair that depicts what the subject is, not what the subject can do. E.g. you might have a Driving License, issued by a local driving authority. Your driver’s license has your DOB on it. In this case, the claim name would be DOB , the claim value would be your DOB, e.g. 8th June 1970 and the person who issued it would be the driving license authority. Claims based authorization in simple words, access the value of a claim and permits access to a resource that is based upon the value. For example, if you want access to a night club the permission process might be:

The security officer at the door would evaluate the value of your date of birth claim and whether they trust the issuer before granting you access.

An identity can contain multiple claims with multiple values and has multiple claims of the same type.

Adding claims checks

Claim based authorization checks are declarative. The developer fixes them within their code, against a controller or an action within a controller, specifying claims which the current user should possess, and optionally the value the claim must hold to access the requested resource. Requirements of claims are policy based, the developer should build and register a policy expressing the claims requirements.

The simplest type of affirmation sees for the existence of a claim and does not check the value.

First, you need to create and list the policy. This takes place as part of the Authorization service configuration, which normally takes part in ConfigureServices() in your Startup.cs file.

In this case the policy EmployeeOnly, checks for the presence of an EmployeeNumber claim of the current name.

Then you can apply the policy using the Policy property on the AuthorizeAttribute feature to define the policy name;

[Authorize(Policy = "EmployeeOnly")]

public IActionResult VacationBalance()

{

return View();

}

The AuthorizeAttribute feature can be applied to an entire controller, in this instance, only names matching the policy will be allowed an entry to any Action on the controller.

[Authorize(Policy = "EmployeeOnly")]

public class VacationController : Controller

{

public ActionResult VacationBalance()

{

}

}

If you have a controller that is covered by the AuthorizeAttribute feature, but want to permit anonymous access to particular actions you apply the AllowAnonymousAttribute feature;

[Authorize(Policy = "EmployeeOnly")]

public class VacationController : Controller

{

public ActionResult VacationBalance()

{

}

[AllowAnonymous]

public ActionResult VacationPolicy()

{

}

}

Most claims come with a value. You could specify a list of permitted values when creating the policy. The following example is only applicable for employees whose employee number was 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5.

public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services)

{

services.AddMvc();

services.AddAuthorization(options =>

{

options.AddPolicy("Founders", policy =>

policy.RequireClaim("EmployeeNumber", "1", "2", "3", "4", "5"));

}

}

Multiple Policy Evaluation

If you apply many policies to a controller or action then all policies must progress before access is granted. For example;

[Authorize(Policy = "EmployeeOnly")]

public class SalaryController : Controller

{

public ActionResult Payslip()

{

}

[Authorize(Policy = "HumanResources")]

public ActionResult UpdateSalary()

{

}

}

In the above example, any name that fulfills the policy of EmployeeOnly can access the Payslip action as that policy is made compulsory on the controller. But in order to take up the UpdateSalary action, it (identity) must please both the EmployeeOnly and the HumanResources policy.

If you need more complicate policies, e.g. taking a DOB claim, calculating an age from it then checking the age is 21 or more than that you need to write custom policy handlers.

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